Smart Measure is Inaccurate but Fun

Smart Measure is an application that will assist you in estimating the height and distance of a thing. It makes use of the camera on your phone and an accelerometer in order to triangulate the height and distance, using very basic geometric calculations. Although the developer of this app deserves an honorable mention for innovation and creativity, the accuracy of the calculations falls a little short.

For starters, you will need to calibrate the phone and program, and if you haven’t already done so with the accelerometer in your phone you will need to head to your application settings area and do so there. In order to calibrate the software, it is necessary for you to inform it about the height you’re holding it when you use the application, and being accurate here is vital. It is recommended that you make use of a measuring tape to calculate the height from the ground to your collarbone and enter that total in.

When this has been accomplished, you will need to consistently keep your phone at the level you’ve set, and then aim the camera inside it at the bottom of the object you’ve selected. It is very important that you aim the phone at the base of the thing you’re trying to measure, since this is a key factor in the working of the triangulation. After the application has calculated the estimated distance to the object you can save it by selecting the Get Distance button that is found on the screen.

Should you want to calculate the height of a particular button, you will need to select the button that says Height, aim the camera at the top end of the object you wish to measure and select the Get Height button. The distance and height of the object will then be saved to the screen; you are also able to make use of it to calculate the height you are standing at inside a building.

Unfortunately, the results given by the application were not very often accurate. While sometimes it was incorrect only by a few feet, at other times it was more than 10 feet off. The height calculations were more often correct than the distance ones, although why this is so remains a mystery. In addition, if you are not on the same level surface of the object you’re trying to measure, like a slope, this fact will throw it off completely.

This app does not work well enough for use in calculating measurements that need to be exact, and its practical use is somewhat questionable, besides being a fun conversation starter perhaps.